GE has announced it will begin supplying smart-grid technology to Skiatook in Oklahoma as local authorities look to modernize the city’s energy infrastructure.

The system will allow Skiatook to take advantage of modern meters and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) for its utility grids without having to incur significant upfront capital investments.

According to GE (Fairfield, CT, USA), a utility will be able to access the system – branded Grid IQ Solutions as a Service and introduced by the industrial giant last year – for a monthly subscription fee.

“The agreement between the city of Skiatook and GE will allow the city to provide state-of-the-art utility billing, monitoring and outage detection services to the citizens and business community of Skiatook in the most cost-effective and reliable manner,” said Dan Yancey, Skiatook’s city manager. “The system will strategically place the city light years ahead of where we were moths ago and set the stage for future opportunities.”

Skiatook is to receive a package of services that includes electric and water meter services for its AMI, prepaid electric billing and a consumer web portal.

The package also includes features like outage detection, asset monitoring and support for Skiatook’s utility grid for the first ten years of service.

GE claims the technology will not only reduce costs for Skiatook but also allow it to launch electric and water meters more quickly than would previously have been possible.

Skiatook’s energy consumers, meanwhile, will be able to better understand their energy usage and take steps to reduce their spending.

“The pre-integrated services included in GE’s SaaS offering provide cities like Skiatook with the reliability and efficiency needed to meet growing electrical and water distribution challenges,” said Todd Jackson, the product line leader of software solutions for GE’s digital energy business.

“Thanks to the subscription-based and cloud-based design, GE helps position utilities and their customers to make more informed decisions regarding their energy usage,” he added.

The signing of the deal comes shortly after GE revealed that it would open a new $110m oil and gas technology center in Oklahama City.

GE says that its SaaS services are also being used by Holly Springs in Mississippi, Norcross in Georgia and Leesburg in Florida.